Eric Ravilious, Vicarage in Winter, 1935, private collection
I would like to say that it's All Systems Go here in south Bristol, but it's hard to get moving in January, isn't it? It's cold and the sky outside is so lacklustre it's not even properly grey. But it is getting lighter again, and the camping season is not far off...
Meanwhile, lot's going on. We're doing final proofing of the
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Bawden, Ravilious & More: Busy Times in 2018
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Edward Bawden: Preview
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Eric Ravilious: The Lost Watercolours
Eric Ravilious, Fairey Battle, 1942
As you may have gathered, I'm currently putting together the catalogue raisonne (can't seem to do accents on this!) of Ravilious watercolours. This will form the basis of a book to be published in 2019, 'Eric Ravilious: The Complete Watercolours'. The aim is to include every known watercolour, and to that end I'm on a mission to find as many as possible of
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Ravilious & Bawden in the Snow
Eric Ravilious, Halstead Road in Snow, 1935, private collection
So far I've resisted posting photos of the current Snowmageddon anywhere, mostly because I live in Bristol and we have about a teacupful. Instead, here are two rather different visions of snowfall. In each case we can see the artist using watercolour in a slightly unusual way.
Writing about 'Halstead Road in Snow' to Helen Binyon
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Are You Sitting Comfortably?
A bug's life... photo by Tim Mainstone
Out very soon from the Mainstone Press, 'Are You Sitting Comfortably?' will take armchair travellers on an extraordinary journey. Edward Bawden grew up wanting to illustrate books, and for sixty years or more he did just that, not only creating designs for dozens of book jackets but also providing sets of illustrations for a remarkable array of titles.
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Edward Bawden at the All Saints Arts Festival
Edward Bawden, The Showboat at Baghdad, 1944
Quick diary date... on 25 May I'm giving my lecture 'Edward Bawden: Artist & Adventurer' at the inaugural All Saints Festival in Maldon, Essex. Is that where the sea salt comes from? I expect I'll find out. Anyway, if you're in the area and want to come along you will just have time to whizz to Dulwich Picture Gallery and see the Bawden exhibition (
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A Walk Through Bawden's World
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Artist Couples Exhibition comes to Bristol!
© 1961 estate of Vanessa Bell, courtesy Henrietta Garnett. Photo credit: RWA (Royal West of England Academy)
For the past three years I've been working with director Alison Bevan and the curatorial staff at the Royal West of England Academy, putting together an unusual kind of exhibition. There's a clue in the title - In Relation: Nine Couples who Transformed Modern British Art.
The
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Hokusai and Hiroshige in Bristol
Hokusai, Fine Wind Clear Morning, 1830-32
If you happen to be in Bristol this autumn I recommend a visit to the exhibition of woodblock prints by Hokusai and Hiroshige at the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery. The exhibition is in three parts, with the first group of works on display until January. As I understand it, the prints belong to the museum but generally spend their days in storage - the
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Gawain Again
Three years ago I began working with Clive Hicks-Jenkins and Dan Bugg on a new project: to create a set of prints devoted to 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'. Clive loved Simon Armitage's translation of the wily old poem, so it is exciting and rather extraordinary to see that Faber are publishing this new edition of the Armitage text, complete with Clive's illustrations.
Gawain has inspired
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A Dance to the Music of Time
Nicolas Poussin, A Dance to the Music of Time, c1635, Wallace Collection
For a long time I've been meaning to re-read Anthony Powell's waltz through the 20th century, and now I have the perfect excuse. I mean what better way can there be to avoid real life for the next few months than by immersing oneself in a twelve-volume series of books? Although, having said that, I will probably have a
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50 50: Barbara Jones
Barbara Jones, The Resort, 1950
A time traveller visiting mid-20th-century Britain would discover a painted world. Restaurants, department stores, schools and hospitals were filled with murals painted by the best artists of the day. Aside from a few celebrated examples (think Rex Whistler at Tate Britain) the most of these have disappeared, and in many cases not even a photograph survives.
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View this post on Instagram Minimalist advert? A post shared by James Russell (@jamesrussell66) on Jan 10, 2019 at 8:56am PST
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Walking
the tightrope... #paulklee
A post shared by James Russell (@jamesrussell66) on
Jan 13, 2019
at 2:37am PST
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Ramblers
at Westbury, June 1937, photo Reuben Saidman
#whitehorse
A
post shared by James Russell (@jamesrussell66) on
Nov 20, 2018
at 11:54pm PST
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In Relation: Laura & Harold Knight
Harold Knight, Laura Johnson aged 14,1891 (RA)
When she died in 1970, at the age of ninety-two, Dame Laura Knight RA was the epitome of a national treasure – an establishment figure whose art was reassuringly approachable and unthreatening. It was hard to imagine her upsetting the Royal Academy or having work dismissed as ‘vulgar’, yet Knight’s long battle to express herself freely as an
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In Relation: Eric Ravilious & Tirzah Garwood
Tirzah Garwood, Hornet and Wild Rose, 1940s (Towner Gallery)
The story of Eric Ravilious and Tirzah Garwood began in 1925 when the 22-year old Ravilious returned to his boyhood home to teach at the Eastbourne School of Art. Then in her late teens, a Colonel’s daughter and thoroughly respectable, Tirzah was already a student and observed the new staff member dispassionately:
‘He had a
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Symposium - An Outbreak of Talent
Paul Nash photographed by Lance Sieveking, 1924
“Ten years ago I was teaching at the Royal College of Art. I was
fortunate to be there during an outbreak of talent, and can
remember at least eight men and women who have made names for
themselves since then in a variety of different directions; in Painting,
Edward Burra; Applied Design, Edward Bawden, Barnett Freedman,
and Eric Ravilious;
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Dreamers and wanderers have
always loved paths... Eric Ravilious 'Chalk Paths' 1935 .
#ericravilious #landscape #chalk #20thcenturyart #modernbritishart
#watercolor #watercolour #outbreakoftalent
A post shared by James
Russell (@jamesrussell66) on May 24, 2019 at 9:57am
PDT
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NEWSFLASH!! 'Reflection' at Ferens Art Gallery opens August!
Eric Ravilious, Rye Harbour, 1938 (Ingram Collection)
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